Time-lapse videos show off nighttime beauty around Northwest

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Photographer Don Jensen has come up with a interesting way to show off not only the nighttime beauty of a clear sky in the Cascades, but also a unique lesson in just how fast the Earth spins on its axis.

This video shows just over 7,000 images stacked into an animated star trails display over the Washington's North Cascades. (The straight lines are passing airplanes.)

"What this method does is, layer each new star image on top of the prior image (frame). The result is the visible tracing of the star trails instead the usual movement of stars across the screen. The interesting result is when the sky is full of trails and lights up the screen," Jensen wrote.

But have you ever been out looking at the stars, and wondered just how fast they spin around the sky due to the Earth's rotation? Jensen has the answer.

"We are moving, over 1000 mph at the Equator. However, closer to Seattle where most of these were shot, the speed is about 707 mph," Jensen wrote. "Considering that most sequences in this video were taken over 3 hours, the camera (sitting on the earth) travelled more than 2100 miles during each scene."

Travelling at a much slower pace, but still putting on a distinct nighttime display was the fog moving into Seattle on New Year's Day. Photographer Dan Poss went up to the top of the Space Needle and captured these amazing videos of fog moving into the city from Elliott Bay:

Just goes to show that you don't need daylight to see some amazing natural sights around here!

Pictures from our front porch of the Stout Fire from Sutherlin on the evening of July 30, 2015. Later in the evening after the moon rise, the effect of the smoke from the fires in Douglas County on the moon.